Storm sewers get stickers

Students from the Lighthouse School show off the stickers that they were placing on storm drains across town on Friday. The point was to remind people how much pollution goes down the drains and into the Price River. This storm drain is a good example with plastic bottles and paper cups piled up agaist the garbage grate that protects the drain.

By JOHN SERFUSTINISun Advocate Reporter

About a dozen students from the Lighthouse School did their part for watershed protection in Price Friday afternoon.

They took to the streets and pasted stickers on scores of storm drains around town.

The point of the stickers is to remind people that storm drains carry rain water and snowmelt into the Price River. Whatever junk, chemicals and other pollution is on the streets and lawns makes its way into river whenever the precipitation flows.

Before the young people moved out on bikes and buses, they took part in a program presented by Daniel Gunnell and Melissa Swasey of the Utah Association of Conservation Districts demonstrating the importance of protecting the watershed from pollution. Volunteers dumped lawn fertilizer and motor oil on a plastic model town, then sprayed the model with water.

It was easy to see how pollution on the ground makes its way into streams and lakes.

In the case of the Price River, oil slick from driveways and parking lots runs into the local river, then on to the Green River, then to the Colorado, then to Lake Powell. While one storm drain may seem like a small point of pollution, considering the number of cities and towns along the hundreds of miles to Lake Powell, all those storm drains add up.